6 Most Common SEO Mistakes that Can Affect Your Site Ranking

It’s true: today’s world of SEO, SMO, and HTML can be an overwhelming one; especially for lawyers with a busy law practice to run. Depending on what you read or who you talk to, high page rankings can feel like an impossible feat. Sometimes, the best solution is to make sure that your current legal marketing plan isn’t hurting your law firm’s online presence. By first ensuring you’re not guilty of any of today’s most frequent SEO blunders, you can slowly move into creating an effective social media marketing plan.

Read on to learn a few of the most common SEO companies and legal marketers make in terms of on-site SEO…

1. The Overuse of Keywords

Keywords are a critical component of a great SEO campaign, but like many things, moderation is key. Use your researched keywords with precision and conciseness. Google and your potential clients know when they’re being scammed with too many key words.

2. Duplicate Content and Canonicalization

As we all know by now, Google and the other search engines strongly dislike duplicative content. So much so that they will use it against you and push your site down in search results. So how do you avoid this major SEO blunder?

Comb your law firm’s website to be sure you haven’t duplicated content anywhere.

Use a site like Copyscrape to search the web and see if any of your content has been scraped.

If your site does require duplicate content for any reason (aka practice areas, etc…), add 301 redirects to your content so Google does not read both as original posts.

Confirm that you are correctly implementing your canonical tags (rel=canonical). This tells search engines that each page is your original content. Failure to add these across your site can cause a significant drop in SERPs.

3. Incorrect Linking Habits

Just like keywords, internal links are often overdone. While internal links are important for credibility and an overall good user experience, limit your links to 1-2 per 500 words, as a rule. Likewise, be methodical about the anchor text you use. This is a direct search engine bot communication so be precise.

4. Problems with Hosting and Servers

If your website is hosted on a server with various other URLs, Google may ding your rankings.

5. Site Maps and a Crawlable Website

Your website needs a site map — and one that is current; with comprehensive links to all indexable pages. Of course, your entire website should be crawlable. This means none of the pages on your site are hidden – If users can’t find your pages, neither can Google.

6. Sluggish Load Times and Poor Usability

If you really want to see your SERPs plummet, create a user-interface that’s confusing and slow to load. Studies show you have less than 3 milliseconds to establish engagement and trust with a new visitor. This means that your law firm’s website needs to professionally communicate your services, and in a clear manner, quickly.